Some of you know, I write science fiction stories and create the environments for my stories with World Creator and Terragen but I would like to go further!

I would like to make my environments more realistic and I am new to the world of 3D environment so I need help.

My main objective is to make my textures more realistic. What do I mean by that? When I work on an environment, I create my terrain, apply a texture and then I make a rendering but in the end, my terrain is "flat", it has no relief! I have the color of my texture but my texture is not in 3D, I don't know if you know what I mean?

How can I fix that ? If I want a "salt desert" type soil ( or other ) , how can I get relief textures?

Do you know of any tutorials (with terragen or World Creator) to do this?

Some people told me about websites like megascans, quixel, substance designer, poliigon but I don't know what I need to do and how, especially on Terragen ( or world creator )

I'll try to get my Salt Falts (https://planetside.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,25898.0.html) project to Danny over at NWDA that you can inspect. I created a salt flats texture based on a grayscale displacement (which means it can be orthographically project and exported easily) and apply subtle colouring. I've never tried doing tutorials before, and not sure how my PC would handle recording Terragen but maybe I'd give it a try if there was interest.

Same as the terrain is built with displacements, you can use smaller displacements for smaller relief and terrain features. Mixing several types and coloring those by using masks (which can either be procedural, like PF's or simple shapes, or drawn in painted shader, or imported greyscale tifs or so), will get you the smaller reliefs on your terrain. It takes experimentation or reading older posts, downloading tgc's or tgd's to find out what you need.Those smaller displacements are best done after the compute terrain, which saves render time (computing costs, and more nodes costs more). There are fake stones, you can make fake grass with fake stones too. Lots of examples to be found here.I hope this helps a bit.

Quote from: Dune on December 09, 2018, 01:40:32 amSame as the terrain is built with displacements, you can use smaller displacements for smaller relief and terrain features. Mixing several types and coloring those by using masks (which can either be procedural, like PF's or simple shapes, or drawn in painted shader, or imported greyscale tifs or so), will get you the smaller reliefs on your terrain. It takes experimentation or reading older posts, downloading tgc's or tgd's to find out what you need.Those smaller displacements are best done after the compute terrain, which saves render time (computing costs, and more nodes costs more). There are fake stones, you can make fake grass with fake stones too. Lots of examples to be found here.I hope this helps a bit.

If you could take this one step further to illustrate it, it would be great. An example would definitely do. Thanks in advance.

If you are using Surface Layers for your color, you need to plug something into the Displacement input of a Surface Layer to get displacement ("relief", as you called it). The easiest way to do this as a start (though not necessarily the best), is to plug the Fractal Breakup shader that you already have with your Surface Layer into the Displacement input of the same Surface Layer. Initial results may be quite rough (the default Roughness in the Fractal Breakup is fairly high at 5), but you can either reduce Displacement Multiplier in the Surface Layer to 0.1 (to start, experiment from there), or you can reduce Roughness in the Fractal Breakup shader on the Colour tab to around 1 (again, adjust to your preference).

If you are already using Power Fractal shaders instead of Surface Layers for color, then literally all you need to do is go to the Displacement tab and check the Apply Displacement box, then adjust Amplitude, Roughness, and other settings to your preference.

There is a lot of experience and skill that goes into creating good surface shading, but that is the way you start to add "dimension", "relief", etc. to your textures.

Quote from: Oshyan on December 09, 2018, 11:55:19 pmIf you are using Surface Layers for your color, you need to plug something into the Displacement input of a Surface Layer to get displacement ("relief", as you called it). The easiest way to do this as a start (though not necessarily the best), is to plug the Fractal Breakup shader that you already have with your Surface Layer into the Displacement input of the same Surface Layer. Initial results may be quite rough (the default Roughness in the Fractal Breakup is fairly high at 5), but you can either reduce Displacement Multiplier in the Surface Layer to 0.1 (to start, experiment from there), or you can reduce Roughness in the Fractal Breakup shader on the Colour tab to around 1 (again, adjust to your preference).

If you are already using Power Fractal shaders instead of Surface Layers for color, then literally all you need to do is go to the Displacement tab and check the Apply Displacement box, then adjust Amplitude, Roughness, and other settings to your preference.

There is a lot of experience and skill that goes into creating good surface shading, but that is the way you start to add "dimension", "relief", etc. to your textures.

I feel like it's really interesting results! Is it possible to place a different colour on these "stones" ? Different of terrain colour ? Or create a mask to apply the rocks only on this mask ?(I would like to point out that I have placed my fake stone shader above the shader of my terrain, maybe with other settings or another configuration we can do more interesting, more accomplished things )

I feel like it's really interesting results! Is it possible to place a different colour on these "stones" ? Different of terrain colour ? (I would like to point out that I have placed my fake stone shader above the shader of my terrain, maybe with other settings or another configuration we can do more interesting, more accomplished things )

I'm having trouble posting pictures here lol

[attach=1]

This image is my planet " Sama " without without the " fake stone shader "

I just see another shader like " Surface shader glass " so, can we put this shader only on the rocks I create before with the " fake rocks shaders " ? Or another configuration to have differents results ?

Fake stones usually go under the compute terrain, after the base color you can add a surface shader which carries stones as child. There you can color stones and mask them (either by masking the surface shader they are child of, or the stones themselves).

Quote from: Dune on December 10, 2018, 05:56:38 amFake stones usually go under the compute terrain, after the base color you can add a surface shader which carries stones as child. There you can color stones and mask them (either by masking the surface shader they are child of, or the stones themselves).

Thank.

for those who want to learn how to use stones, here is a tutorial that I am following absolutely awesome! :